


End the War

by neuronary



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Azula (Avatar) Needs a Hug, Azula (Avatar)-centric, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Happy Azula (Avatar), Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Inspired by Fanfiction, Zuko kills him, all the fire nation girls need therapy, azula is an organisational Queen, basically i'm an absolute slut for mai ty lee and azula sharing a bed both platonically and not, but slumber parties will have to do, ozai dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:30:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25100128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neuronary/pseuds/neuronary
Summary: Azula’s first thought after she hears the lightning is that she should probably wait for a bit before going in. Then the guards tell her that Zuko went in about three degrees ago and she thinks maybe she’ll take a tiny bit longer.Her next thought is that Zuko is an idiot. Her next next thought is that she should probably go in to try and smooth things over with her father so that she’s next in line for the throne and not next in line for a bolt of lightning to the face.---Or, Zuko's aim is off, Azula is better at organisation than she is at feelings, and this changes the course of history.
Relationships: Azula & Mai & Ty Lee, Azula & Ozai (Avatar), Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Azula/Mai/Ty Lee, in the background?? if you squint???
Comments: 27
Kudos: 866
Collections: A:tla, One shots





	End the War

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Quiet Like a Fire](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22399147) by [WhatWouldJackSparrowDo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatWouldJackSparrowDo/pseuds/WhatWouldJackSparrowDo). 



> It is 2:26 in the AM. This is totally the best thing I've ever written.
> 
> No, but in all seriousness, this was a really fun exercise in not self-editing too much. It's more stream-of-consciousness-y than I would have liked, but I'm really glad I did it, and way more happy with it than I thought it would be.
> 
> Trigger Warnings: there's some relatively graphic descriptions of Ozai's body post-lightning and some bits about Azula's thoughts on her father's abuse but those are pretty implied.
> 
> Beyond that, hope you enjoy!

Azula’s first thought after she hears the lightning is that she should probably wait for a bit before going in. Then the guards tell her that Zuko went in about three degrees ago and she thinks maybe she’ll take a tiny bit longer.

(She discovered that dead bodies were worse if you know them when she was twelve.)

Her next thought is that Zuko is an idiot. Her next next thought is that she should probably go in to try and smooth things over with her father so that she’s next in line for the throne and not next in line for a bolt of lightning to the face.

She bows as she walks in, keeps her eyes on her feet because smelling her brother’s corpse is better than seeing her brother’s corpse, and breathes as silently as she possibly can.

“My lord.”

There is a long moment of silence, then:

“Lala?”

Her gaze snaps up immediately and -  _ oh, for the love of Agni, Zuko, you idiot _ \- she sees her father, face permanently frozen in shock, chest still smoking, dead. She takes only the slightest moment to gather herself and compose an emergency plan before she speaks.

“Congratulations on mastering lightning, brother dearest,” she says, because it’s best to stay on his good side as much as possible, then. “Took you long enough,” because she can’t help it.

“Lala,” he says again, and he sounds terrible, “what have I done?”

Azula takes the deepest of deep breaths and adjusts her plan accordingly. “Alright, Zuko. What was your plan?”

“I just wanted to distract him so I could-” he cuts himself off. “ _ Dad _ ,” he says, instead of anything productive.

“Zuko.” She has to be sharp, because she has the stomach for this side of politics and Zuko most definitely does not. “What were you going to do after?”

“Find the avatar,” he says, numbly. “Teach him firebending. Break Uncle out of prison. End the war.”

“Well then,” says Azula, thankful that gripping his shoulder and pulling is enough to get him to his feet, “why don’t you run along and do that. I’ll handle this.” She tries to pull her face into a smile that isn’t threatening. She’s not sure it works, but Zuko seems to agree. He turns back to the doors. “Not that way,” she reminds him. “There’s guards out there. That way.”

Zuko nods, still staring at their father, or what’s left of him. Azula shoos him away as best she can and sends off a half-hearted prayer to the spirits to let him make it to wherever he’s going.

(It’s less for his sake and more for her convenience. He’d be a very messy, complicated thread if he stayed.)

(‘End the war’ he’d said. Poor idiot. The war was already over.)

The next part is harder. Nor difficult, but hard. Father being dead makes it easy to forget what he is - was - like. Thinking about him in the past tense is going to take time.

The rest of the day passes like clockwork. The guards take the body away to be prepared for the funeral rites. The war ministers will already need time to get back to the caldera. Azula oversees the capture of the majority of the invasion force - the rest are dead, but they are easier to look at than her father was - and sends the leaders to the Boiling Rock, per protocol.

(She thanks Agni and Sozin for the protocols. They make things so much easier.)

One of the younger Fire Sages tells her that the funeral will be the next day. She nods, and goes to sit vigil in the family shrine, because that’s the done thing. She is not expecting Mai and Ty Lee to appear, but they do anyway. She doesn’t cry and they look away. They’ve brought candles and chatter.

“When I threw my first sparks,” Azula begins, and doesn’t finish, because she doesn’t know how to tell that story, doesn’t know if she should tell the version where her father’s face smiles with pride or with self-satisfaction, doesn’t know entirely which one was true and which one was a comfort to her. Then she’s not crying again but Mai and Ty Lee don’t look away this time so she is and it shouldn’t hurt this much when she’d spent half her life hating him.

(She’d spent the other half loving him.)

Ty Lee taps her shoulder lightly and Mai taps her knee and Azula’s flame doesn’t go out until the sun rises the next day.

All three of them fall into her bed and sleep until they have to be up for the funeral. It’s the best Azula’s slept in years and she tries not to think about why.

She doesn’t remember the funeral at all, but she knows what must have happened, so it’s alright. Her coronation will wait for three days to be respectful, and because that’s the done thing.

Azula sits by a pond that used to have turtleducks and throws bread crumbs into the water.

\---

“You’re free to go back to your work with the circus,” Azula says, because she’s just gotten out of a meeting where someone implied an awful lot of dishonourable things and she is still reeling from the fury that comes with it being socially unacceptable to set someone’s fancy new dress on fire.

Ty Lee blinks.

“I no longer require your assistance with tracking down wayward family members,” Azula clarifies, “so you’re free to go.”

Mai sighs in an especially put upon way and rolls her scroll back up. “Am I free to stay?”

Azula nods, not wanting to think about why she’s asking. She doesn’t want to face the knife that twists further into her chest every time she tries with them.

That night, they sneak into her room in the kind of way that should make her worry about the Palace’s overall security but doesn’t.

“The circus’ tour,” Ty Lee informs her, all too happily and all too soon, “is passing by the Caldera soon. Will you come to my second debut?”

“Did you use a  _ black ribbon hawk _ to inquire as to your  _ employment _ ?”

“Yes. Will you come?”

Azula glares at her very half-heartedly.

“Please?”

“Fine.”

“Beds,” Mai says, more irritably than either of them will ever hear outside this room, “are for  _ sleeping _ . And sleeping only.”

“Beds are for one other thing also,” Ty Lee points out, and Azula is too busy trying to smother herself with a pillow out of sheer embarrassment to care when Mai elbows Ty Lee to the floor and makes her stay there for the rest of the night.

(Ty Lee is lying across the both of them in the morning, but Azula’s cheek is pressed into Mai’s chest and all their legs take far too long to get untangled so there’s plenty else to avoid talking about.)

It’s a short two weeks until Ty Lee’s circus arrive. Azula wastes too much and not enough of it in meetings. Ty Lee is almost always in the courtyards when she has time for her - when she has time that she isn’t spending elsewhere, when she has time to see her, when she has time and energy to think about her leaving long enough to see her and there is no way to make that not sound awful. Ty Lee spends every second cajoling her into watching every gymnastics trick and contortion she can manage, endlessly testing combinations because her show has to be ‘just right’.

“Why ask us?” Mai drawls one day, handing Azula another loaf of bread for the koi-fish-that-were-once-turtleducks. “We’re not exactly experts.” She’s talking more, now that they’ve established she’ll be staying in the royal palace with Azula, instead of going back to ‘New Ozai’ (Azula had thought it was a tacky name before, now she thinks maybe it should be tacky) to her parents. She was even dangerously close to giving an opinion the day before. Azula might shoot for a dinner suggestion by the end of next week.

(Mai is a nice side project to distract her from the Zuko problem. Besides, this is, according to the plays, how friendship works.)

(Azula has to keep reminding herself that she’s allowed to have friends now. Said friends are there to reassure her that they’re allies when she wakes up in the middle of the night with pleas on her lips and terror in her chest.)

“You have to like it, silly, it’s for you. There’d be no point if you weren’t enjoying it.”

Azula feels her face flush and does her best not to panic too much. Ty Lee would be proud, if she knew.

\---

Zuko turns up again with the Avatar and all his new friends in tow on the day of the comet.

_ On the day of the comet. _

Azula might scream.

“Azula,” he says, with his hands up like he thinks she’s going to attack him (to be fair, she is considering it), “Azula, we’ve come to talk.”

“Alright,” she says. “I’ll have the servants put you up in a tea room, but I’m not free until mid-afternoon.”

“This is more important than whatever hair care appointments you’ve got on,” snarls the waterbender, looking half feral. Azula does her best to remind herself that her family’s propaganda  _ is _ propaganda.

“Well, I’m very sorry,” she says, not sorry at all, “but I actually have the world to run, so it’s mid-afternoon for exactly thirty degrees or never.” Then she dips her head for just long enough that it technically constitutes a bow and leaves.

She does a little panicking, just for fun, when she gets inside, and bunks off her war meeting to find Mai.

(“Zuko’s back and you can stab him but not yet because he has a do-gooder entourage and I need to get into their good graces.”

“...”

“That’s a royal decree.”

“... _ Fine _ .”)

Mai accompanies her very grumpily - read: she doesn’t roll her eyes while she frowns - to the tea room at the exact point of mid-afternoon. Azula brings Ishizuka with her, too, because he’s meek and good at taking notes and he won’t make her headache worse. (It also gives her an excuse to ask for introductions to be made without giving away the fact that she has no idea of anyone’s names.)

The Avatar - Aang, which sounds like something straight out of the old scrolls she’s read - looks unreasonably happy, for someone who’s a degree away from being imprisoned for life.

“We’re all so glad you’ve decided to work with us, Azula,” he says. “Fire Lord Azula,” he says, after Zuko elbows him very unsubtly in the ribs. His bow is sloppy, and he’s lying, or stupid, because the waterbender is glaring at her like she’s considering murder and her brother looks relatably put upon. Their earthbender is staring at the table and smirking. Azula wonders if she should be offended by this.

It is not the first time she wishes Zuko hadn’t killed their father - her father, when she thought about it for too long - but it is the first time annoyance has overtaken grief, so that’s nice. Mai reaches under the table and taps her leg. It’s subtle and emotionless and perfect, and if Azula were Zuko she’d burst into tears on the spot, but she’s not, so she doesn’t.

“Right.” She picks up her teacup so that her hands have something to do. “What did you want to talk about?”

"We want to end the war," says Zuko, and even Mai snorts into her teacup.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, you can find me on Tumblr, FanFiction.Net, and Discord, where I have an atla server.
> 
> I am also a beta reader. If you want me to take a look at something, you can hit me up anywhere.
> 
> Have a nice whatever time wherever you are and stay safe :)
> 
> P.S. Black Lives Matter and if you can spare the time, please consider signing this petition. Breonna Taylor's murderers still haven't been brought to justice.


End file.
